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THE POLK COUNTY PULSE
April 12, 2017
GOD IS IN CONTROL? (or “Humanity Gone Crazy”) References: Romans 1:18-25 Matthew 13:24-30 Philippians 2:9-11
It is still true. God is omnipotent. God is omniscient. God is omnipresent. God is still God and He is more God than we can ever imagine. This is all still true, but… something is terribly wrong with it all! How many times have I heard the statement, “God is in control?” And, every time I hear it, or read it, something just ties up in knots inside of me. The statement does not match with what we observe in this word, nor does it match up with the theology that it assumes. There are some things about the statement that need to be evaluated. First, if God is truly at all times and in all ways in control, then He has made a terrible mess of things! That means that He could have stopped Hitler before the whole world got into a war that killed, blew up, tore apart, millions of young men and destroyed millions of families. The casualties of all wars are horrible beyond expression. Question: did God do this? If He is in absolute control, then the answer must be “yes.” But the fact is, God did NOT do it! God’s sovereignty allowed Him to create life and people with the will and the freedom to make REAL CHOICES! And, the real choices that men have made over centuries have caused all sorts of horrible things. Humanity has gone crazy. When a teenaged girl is being brutally beaten, raped, and murdered, did God do that? When she cries out, “what kind of a God do you serve?” What do you say? For those who say that His “control” is absolute, the answer must be “yes.” But He did not do it! No! God is not the Author of evil! And our undersanding of Him must never make Him to be so. In creation, God created a people “in His image” and “in His likeness.” If this means anything at all, it must mean that mankind was created with the ability, and responsibility, to make real choices, real decisions, even if those choices did not conform to God’s desire. Freedom to make real choices enables us to truly love each other and to love and serve God, or, it enables us to rebel against Him and every standard that He has established. And, there are consequences… always consequences! I think that some of those who make this statement do simply because they can’t understand why things happen as they do, and it is just easy to say, “Well, God has a reason for this.” NO! There are things that happen that fall far outside of what God has a “reason” for. Make no mistake about this. God is in control in the ultimate sense, and He will step in and close it all down in His own time. But, in the interim, because of something called the “sin nature,” we will continue to “mess it up.” If you have studied the Word of God, you will have read that Jesus called Satan the “prince of this world.” And, you will remember the passage in 1 John that says, “the whole world lies in the evil one.” You will remember, do you not? And in this interim, believe it or not, God is doing what He set out to do; He is creating a people for Himself, and that “people” will be made up of those who use their ability to make real choices to choose to love and worship Him. This life is not a stage play, where all of the lines are written for us, and the outcome is pre-determined with no real choices to be made. This life is real. Choices that we make are real. Consequences are real. Final accountability is fixed in place. God will NOT make our choices for us! He will guide us by His Spirit IF WE ARE YIELDED TO HIM! Even then, disobedience is a real and ever-present possibility. It is human disobedience that has caused the mess that we have made, not the One Who gave His Son to fix it! THIS PAGE PURCHASED BY GENE STACKS
April 12, 2017
THE POLK COUNTY PULSE
From the bombs dropped in Japan, when thousands of people were killed in one moment, to nine-eleven, where thousands were killed or maimed and untold numbers of families were tragically disrupted, from Hawaii to Japan, to ISIS of today, in all of that and all of that in between, some would dare to say that “God is in control” of all of this! No! Not the God Who came to us in the person of Jesus Christ! What we see in all of this is humanity gone crazy. We see rebellion. We see the rejection of God and His Only begotten Son. Yes! God is God and God is sovereign, but He will not violate His own creative purpose; a people with freedom to choose who would choose Him… Did He know how it would turn out? Yes, but it had to be this way. Freedom to make real choices can go in many different directions. Lucifer rebelled in Heaven. His seed are still rebelling. What we see in our world are the certain consequences of rejecting the very purpose of our existence. We are here as the product of Jehovah God, who wants us as His family. We sometimes forget the why of our being. And when we do, we have “humanity gone crazy.” The “God is in control” argument is tragically flawed. Tell it to that 15-year old girl who is being beaten and raped… tell her that “God is in control” and she will ask you,“What kind of a God do you have?” Having said all of this, once we come to God in faith, believing in the all-sufficient sacrifice of His Only begotten Son on the cross, things change for us. We have given back to Him the control that we took for ourselves. It is now that He makes “all things work together for good to those who love God and are called according to HIS purposes.” (Romans 8:28) But even then, He does not say, “all things are good.” This world is, in some ways, like a garden. The seed was good. The plants came up, each with all of the potential of the others. But humanity is different in this respect: plants do not choose; humans do. Plants have no choice as to be good or bad; humans do. In this sense, God IS in control. He is in absolute control of the final outcome of it all. After we have had our way, God’s angels will come. Harvest will occur. Separation will happen. Choices will determine whether we go with them to be with Him, or, will we be with the group gathered for eternal destruction? The only way to escape this “world gone crazy” is to choose another King. His name is Jesus. He will accept you, but… CHOICES ARE OURS. CHOICES ARE REAL. CHOICES HAVE CONSEQUENCES. SOME CONSEQUENCES ARE IRREVERSIBLE. God IS omnipotent! God IS omniscient! He is sovereign! God IS God! God IS love! P.S. Remember, “every knee SHALL bow…” It is not that ever knee is bowing now! BUT IT WILL BE! Hard-headed, hard-hearted people, no matter their success in this life, no matter their standing, no matter their wealth, no matter their achievements, WILL BOW, BUT for many, it will be too late. They will not hear “well done, thou good and faithful servant.” They will hear, “depart from me… I never knew you.” We are all a part of one system or the other. We choose which. The choice is not forced upon us. There are no third choices. IS GOD IN CONTROL IN YOUR LIFE? OR ARE YOU A PART OF THIS WORLD GONE CRAZY? There are no third choices! And, if you would argue with my conclusion about a “world gone crazy,” just look for a brief moment at the world outside of the USA. You and I have been de-sensitized to the horrors that are at this very moment happening around most of our little planet. Look at it! Look at it! And, if you see it as it is, you will conclude… as have I… that we live in a world without God, a “world gone crazy.” Choices! Always choices! My name is Gene Stacks and I approve of this message.
THIS PAGE PURCHASED BY GENE STACKS
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